Cops taser woman for resisting arrest after trying to buy too many iPhones

“A local family says a language barrier may have resulted in police using a Taser on a woman after she tried to buy too many iPhones at a local mall. Police, however, say the incident isn’t that clear cut,” WCVB reports. “Xiaojie Li, of Newton, said she is embarrassed by Monday’s Pheasant Lane Mall in New Hampshire incident.”

“Xiaojie Li, of Newton, said she is embarrassed by Monday’s Pheasant Lane Mall in New Hampshire incident,” WCVB reports. “‘So my mom says she don’t know why they called the police, because she doesn’t understand what they are talking about,’ her 12-year-old daughter Jiao Jay said. Jay said her mother bought two iPhones last Friday, and was told that was the limit. When she took video of others she claimed were buying more, the store manager asked her to leave.”

“The confrontation involving the Taser happened when Li went to the store on Monday to pick up two iPhones she ordered online,” WCVB reports. “‘The management of the store asked us to have her removed. The officer approached her, told her she wasn’t welcome in the store, and she refused to leave,’ Nashua Police Capt. Bruce Hansen said. Police say the store had issued a stay-away order against Li.”

WCVB reports, “A video posted on YouTube shows Li and police officers on the floor outside the Apple store at the Nashua mall. The crackle of the Taser and Li’s screams can be heard on the video. “Hansen said the woman had been resisting arrest for about 15 minutes before a second officer arrived at the scene. The 44-year-old mother of two was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest… ‘She wasn’t mistreated in any way. If she left the store when she was told to leave the store, it would’ve been done at that. She was told she was under arrest after repeatedly being told to leave the store. She didn’t submit to the arrest. The officer used the Taser on her to get her to submit to the arrest,’ Hansen said.”

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Taser her or physically beat her down to effect an arrest?
In the real world it takes quite a bit of effort to handcuff an unwilling person. Both parties might sustain physical injuries.
Stop believing TV shows and movies are real, where the person just rolls onto their stomach with hand behind them.

Maybe she was a really tough gal? Maybe the cop had been eating too many doughnuts? But I’m with you, if you can’t arrest a 44-year-old woman without a Taser………………. you should probably be in another line of work.

I have to assume you have never been tasered before if you are saying this. While it is probably the easiest violent response from the cop’s perspective, it’s also an extremely painful form of violence. It’s also ridiculously dangerous to electrocute someone knowing nothing about the health of their heart.

And your statement is ridiculous. Police must first ask a person for their medical records before tasing them?

We have no idea from this story if the woman was just arguing, was pushing and shoving, or was hitting the officers, swinging her purse as a weapon, etc. Assaulting an officer is a crime, and you get subdued and arrested for that. The fact is tasing someone is the safest way to subdue them without endangering the officer or that person to further or more severe injury.

If you don’t want to get tased, do as the police tell you to do. Resistance is futile.

I agree that it sounds ridiculous for a cop to ask for someone’s medical records before tasing them. But it’s even more ridiculous to just shoot electricity into someone not knowing if they have pacemaker or weak heart or anything that could make the electric shock fatal. Therefore, cops shouldn’t tase people. It’s insane that cops do it anyway and people like you are fine with it.

I don’t know all the specifics of this situation, but it would have be a fantastic set of circumstances to go from trying to buy too many iPhones to justifiable police brutality. Some shoving, a language barrier, and lack of “respecting ma authoritah” don’t go nearly far enough to make this kind of police behavior acceptable. This was a 44-year old mother, not a gunman.

If she resisted being handcuffed and they wrestled with her and forced her and broke a bone or dislocated something then she’d file a law suit. It’s a no win situation for the Police. And kind of for Apple. The rules are for all. If she had a brain in her head she’d have just had someone else in her family or a good friend order 2 and pay them back. DUH.

Sorry but you sound very naïve. A middle aged person, even a women can be very hard to control if they don’t want to be. I’ve been to mental institutions where it takes 4 or 5 people to control one person (even a very old person), and they have drugs on their side.

And the officer has no idea if the woman is on drugs, armed in some manner, or how to predict her next action. His job is to diffuse and control the situation, not let her rant and rave about wanting more iPhones. We also don’t know what her behavior was prior to the tasing happening.

Because she is in America, where not only CAN you question authority, you have a responsibility to do so.

NEVER let a cop tell you what to do without justification.

This coming from a Conservative who has MANY friends in law enforcement.

Get pulled over and they want to do a ‘routine’ search…NO!
Told to show your ID when no crime has been committed….NO!
Told to stop videoing on public property…NO!
Told at a roadblock to show insurance…NO!

They do NOT have card blanche over our movement, save for emergencies.

They do, however, deserve our help and respect when doing their job while helping and respecting US.
It requires balance.

I’m not claiming this woman was in the right, but she HAS a right to question what is happening.

The Apple Store is private property. They shouldn’t have had to call the police to get her to leave. She should have left when they asked. You have to be pretty obstinate to make a store call the police before they can get you to leave. I wish they didn’t have this technology and had to knock people like this in the head with a police baton. Then maybe people would have a little more respect.

People think that since they are “in public,” they have rights. A business is private property. You have no constitutional right to be there.

Actually, you do have rights where retail is concerned. Many.
Retailers have rights as well. Maybe she had a legitimate gripe or defective product and they weren’t honoring their warranty. I am not saying that happened in this instance, but there are occasions when you cannot simply be told to leave.

Again, I am NOT saying the woman was right, I was merely answering 3monkies question.

You’re just wrong. If a store calls the police on you, and you tell them that they are not treating you fairly (refund, warranty, etc.). It is not material. You have to leave. The issues you bring up give you rights in court, but not rights to be on private property.

If he refuses to leave when asked (customers are “guests”, and businesses can refuse service to anyone at any time without explanation.

If a cop tells you to leave, and you refuse, you are trespassing. This is an arrest-able offense. If you continue to refuse to leave, you are resisting arrest and can be tasered… hit with a baton… shot….it depends on how far you take it.

They didn’t ask her to leave because of religion. She violated their rules and they asked her to leave, She refused. In doing so she became a trespasser in the police’s eye’s. All they care about when called is if management has asked you to leave and you refused. You do not have a right to go into any store you want…. you are a guest. They don’t have to tell you why. If you think you are being illegally discriminated against, you can take it to a judge. The cops don’t handle that.

Mr. Tone, it is you that have painted yourself into a corner. Your racial arguments don’t hold water. This woman was requested to leave the store because she refused to follow the legitimate guidelines established for doing business in that store. If that store’s guidelines for doing business included serving WASP’s and no one else, it would not have had a spot in that mall, so let’s cease wasting space with riduculous analogies.

If a legitimate business makes a legitimate request for you to leave the premises based on a legitimate beef, and you not only refuse the request, but ignore the legitimate instructions of law enforcement officers to obey the request, then physically resist the attempts of officers to force you to comply…do I need to keep going here?

Wow, can’t believe this thread is still going…..so many who can’t read.

One more time, Mr. Steven (name this time), all of my replies have been about a hypothetical, not the instance that occurred.

I’m sure you feel like you have educated me on some aspect I had no idea about….you didn’t. Read back through where I agree with every person who said you leave when the police say.

What I was talking about was every person’s right to challenge a request, not an order by the police. And if you believe the store has wronged you (not in THIS case) and have a legitimate gripe and all they want you to do is go away, then let them call the police, let the police record the events and then leave with that documentation to have in court.

I’m sure you will return under a new name, stating the same thing, and acting as if I was an OWS child, so if you can’t understand my point by now, you never will.

During the holidays the Stores have the option of asking for police to be there during business hours or to have undercover private security firms. I have worked at 2 stores, the first one had a provate security firm, the second had police.

To the matter of TowerTone- she did question it apparently, just no one spoke her language.
It also company policy to ask people to leave if we even “suspect” that they are resellers. I can almost guarantee that she is one, however, we do not police (no pun intended) the issue. We are to sell to end users only not to any one who is selling the phone to someone else or oversees to another country. She obviously spoke enough english to get the other phones that she had gotten before so either she REALLY wanted these phones or she truely did not understand whatwas happening. Based on evidence in the stories I’d say the first option.

Surely you know that the ruling class in Socialists countries spew tirades about the injustices made toward the common man all the while raking in the dough at a ratio of 1000 to 1… They eat cake, you eat cake crumbs.

It is, how you Libs say, “the Progressive way of doing things!” and is the playbook for the Democratic Party.

The Apple Store is private property. They shouldn’t have had to call the police to get her to leave. She should have left when they asked. You have to be pretty obstinate to make a store call the police before they can get you to leave. I wish they didn’t have this technology (tasers) and had to handle it the old-fashioned way (knock people like this in the head with a police baton). Then maybe people would have a little more respect when on other people’s property.

People think that since they are “in public,” they have rights. A business is private property. You have no constitutional right to be there.

The glorification of cops in US media the last 10-15 years combined with the militarization of civilian police has not been good for these United States.

Note to police- citizens are not “civilians” any more or less than you are. Cops are not military. The part of the idea behind the posse
comitatus law passed after the Civil War and occupation of the south was to draw a bright line between civil police and the military.

As to the whole issue of tasers, the device is going to make a lot of lawyers rich. This “non-lethal” device has killed a long list of people.

If they tell you, you are under arrest, you are under arrest. At that point you are breaking the law and potentially putting their lives (and in a crowded mall, the lives of others) at risk. Whats to say this woman’s next move isn’t to pull out a gun and start shooting after she resist arrest?

Again, we don’t know what this woman did prior to being tased. If she punched or swung her purse at the officers, she’s getting arrested for assaulting an officer. Most of these comments seem to assume that she was just arguing with store employees. If she attacked someone when the police are there, she’s getting arrested. If she resists being arrested, she’s getting tased and arrested.

She didn’t question authority, she refused to comply with a lawful order. Big difference. You can question authority all you want, particularly after the fact, with your lawyer. Resisting a lawful order of a law enforcement officer is actually illegal.

It works like this:

1. You are doing something illegal (like trespassing, refusing to leave private property that isn’t yours, etc.)
2. Police show up, and ask you (again) to leave. You refuse, which is illegal, and increases the amount of trouble you are in.
3. Police offers attempt to take you into custody, because you refused to comply. They are legally allowed to do this. You are not legally allowed to resist.
4. You resist. Now they are authorized to use force to subdue you. You bought this on yourself. You were given multiple chances, and you made the wrong choices.

That’s it. Want to question authority? Sure, that’s your right. “Officer, why are you asking me to leave?” When they give you the reason, like “ma’am, you are trespassing, and you need to leave now,” and you don’t like the answer, that’s a different problem. If you want to argue that trespassing laws don’t apply to you, because you are a from another planet, or whatever, just do it at city hall afterwards with a lawyer. Nobody gets tasered, beaten or arrested. Heck, you might even get money from the city if your rights were violated.

There is a right way to handle it, and a wrong way. I think this woman has successfully demonstrated the wrong way.

I don’t think anyone can argue with this, but if it is aimed at me, my points were what to do BEFORE a cop tells you to leave, and the fact that a business owner can’t make you leave just for ANY reason, and as an ‘officer’ you know you wouldn’t make someone leave because of a prejudice.

America has gone made. The fact that the police has to use taser on an elderly woman is telling. The simple act of making an arrest on a person by a police officer is being make complicated and dangerous to a police officer.

There is no control on the possession of guns in the US. Anyone can have one if he needs one and the excuse is that a gun is a means of personal protection and is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

More often guns can also be used to intimidate or cause harm to others. When guns are indiscriminately being used to settle matters it hacks back to the Wild Wild West era of the US. Frequent occurrences of gun outrages in unlikely places like schools, universities and public places reveals that something is very wrong in the psychological makeup of the US. When stupidity can be protected by the First Amendment and uphold by judges living in ivory towers, the downward spiral of society is assured. Indiscriminate application of the First Amendment is an Achilles heel of the US. The US is headed for more trouble.

A diabetic attack can cause symptoms that mimic a person under the influence of illegal drugs.
Dehydration can cause an individual to behave contrary to their normal behaviour, i.e unreasonably.
But without doubt is the problem of her visiting the store several times even after an order was issued. Why was it not determined by then that she could not communicate in English? Why was her family not paid a visit at home after all Apple inc. had her home address?
New store guidelines are in order Apple inc!

Sounds to me like you’re safer purchasing online!
On the other hand, if you get tasered for buying an iPhone you should get positively NUKED if you try to buy a Surface…!

The act of purchasing a Surface should really carry a government health warning to the effect that since you must be demonstrably round the twist the men in white coats will be knocking on your door any minute now…You have been warned – heeeeere’s JOHNNY!!

Downloading Win8 should get you arrested and sent down for crimes against humanity. Let the punishment fit the crime, I say.

How come during all the “Occupy” protests the police manage to pick people up and remove them without Tasering them?

I’ve watched them pick up 300 lb men and move them and these police need to Taser a small frail woman.

The real problem is Police have a real authority problem. They are so used to the “yes, sir” syndrome, that when somebody says “no” to a cop they freak out. “HOW DARE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING QUESTION MY SUPERIORITY !”.

When a Cop gets challenged by ANY of us inferiors it makes them LIVID !, so it is perfectly understandable that they would demonstrate their power by whipping out a Taser and showing who’s boss.

Believe me, if it were legal, he probably would have shot her in the head. I mean seriously, “YOU THINK YOU CAN QUESTION MY AUTHORITY? IF YOU HAD LEFT WHEN I TOLD YOU TO, YOU WOULDN’T BE DEAD!”

You are so wrong. This is happening at the local level, has nothing to do with government. Don’t open your mouth, unless its about Apple.

A police officer was was being resisted or delayed, very simple. This woman didn’t like what she was hearing, and decided to take it on her own to get what she wanted. She could have asked her daughter or husband to get the phones.

The real concen for Apple is people are trying to buy the phones and smuggle them to other countries. There, they are scalped for whatever the market will bear.

The ridiculous thing is the article stated she had ordered the iPhones online. But when she showed up she obviously wanted to buy more. I don’t think Apple is so concerned about a few iPhones being smuggled overseas as much as its concerned with having some supply for its customers.

It is amusing how you think that practically everything in the U.S. radically changed for the worse in the past four years. In truth, very little changed in terms of law enforcement, courts, etc. The main thing that changed was your level of dissatisfaction because your “team” was not in full control anymore. So you and your team decided to sit on the bench and pout rather than attempting to do the best job possible for this country.

You boast a lot about patriotism and such, but many of you are far too self-centered and greedy to comprehend true patriotism. It is both sad and sickening. You really have a skewed perspective on life and government in the U.S.

The Apple Store is private property. They shouldn’t have had to call the police to get her to leave. She should have left when they asked. You have to be pretty obstinate to make a store call the police before they can get you to leave. I wish they didn’t have this technology and had to knock people like this in the head with a police baton. Then maybe people would have a little more respect.

People think that since they are “in public,” they have rights. A business is private property. You have no constitutional right to be there.

Am I missing something here. The woman doesn’t speak English that’s why she didn’t do what she was told. Is that justification for a cop to taser the poor woman???

Just imagine if you were visiting a foreign country and somebody in a store was telling you something that you didn’t understnad. Then they called the cops who told you something yoiu didn’t understand. Then you got tasered.

“Two days prior to that, she had been asked to leave the store by store personnel for doing something that they didn’t want,” Hansen said, referring to Li’s photographing other customers in the store.”

I am not saying that the tasering was justified. I wasn’t there, but I would like to think that a less violent approach could have been found. However, it would be nice if people would read the readily available hyperlinked information before posting misguided judgmental comments.